The “[un]fair and [un]balanced” FOX News is now into fart stories, even ones that aren’t true. We don’t know where this fits in with creationism, but asserting that dinosaurs extinguished themselves with bodily gas emissions puts FOX the level of tabloids that assert “Cannibals Ate JFK’s Body as Part of Zombie Conspiracy”: here.

In the northern meadow, a group of three hares. Further away, a hare cleaning its fur. An oystercatcher. Scores of coots. Jackdaws. A wood pigeon. Two grey lag geese.

Two redshanks on the muddy island between the godwits and lapwings.

A starling on the meadow island in the northern lake searches for insects.

The sheep have very young lambs, including two black ones. They are here in the reserve to prevent too dense growth of plants.

Loaves of bread around the sheep, as extra food for them. The adult sheep and the lambs do eat it (though one lamb prefers its mother’s milk). But the loaves also attract scores of black-headed gulls, herring gulls, a lesser black-backed gull, magpies, jackdaws, coots, mallards, and domestic geese.

Some black-headed gulls already have a black, or rather: dark brown, head. But most are still in winter plumage.

In the southern lake, a male reed bunting sitting on an old reed stem.

March 2012: New Zealand conservationists are – literally – ‘hearing’ that the Northland kiwi [are] thriving.

An annual ‘listening’ for the bird’s distinctive call in 2011, showed the highest level of growth since listening records began.

‘We recorded growth at all of the original core sites and at all but one of the 12 supplementary clusters,’ says Department of Conservation Whangarei kiwi ranger Emma Craig.

‘This is an absolutely fantastic result, much better than I would have hoped, and a real credit to all those people across Northland involved in kiwi call count monitoring, and kiwi conservation in general,’ she added.

‘Numbers have gone through the roof’

Kiwi are up against a lot of hurdles, and have a suite of predators including dogs, stoats, ferrets, and cats. Luckily, these predators can be addressed, and when they are, some kiwi populations are booming.

‘We are seeing quite a few sites where kiwi conservation has been happening for less than a decade. Call rates had been increasing very slowly; then suddenly in 2011 they went through the roof,’ says Ms Craig.

She credits much of the increase to community groups protecting kiwi in their own backyards and, in particular, good dog control. BNZ Operation Nest Egg has also helped to re-establish kiwi populations in some areas.

It is only the adult kiwi that call, so kiwi call count monitoring picks up population growth a couple of years after it has occurred.

The annual kiwi call count monitoring takes place in May and June each year, with volunteers offering to sit at one of nearly 200 stations listening out for the birds for two hours a night.

Battersea man Mr Aamer has been held without charge in Guantanamo since 2002 after Afghan soldiers in Jalalabad abducted and took him to the US’s equally notorious Bagram airbase.

He says he was working in Afghanistan for a Saudi charity. Leaked files from Guantanamo administrators allege that he “received advanced terrorist training, indicated his willingness to become a martyr and served as a sub-commander of al-Qaida forces.”

But he has never been charged, while Mr Aamer’s lawyers say his jailers have no admissible evidence as many of his statements were obtained through torture.

The campaign’s Joy Hurcombe said in a letter to the two leaders yesterday that the British government hadn’t pressed the US hard enough, despite publicly calling for Mr Aamer’s return.

Renewing Britain and the United States’ “special relationship” was the ideal moment to secure Mr Aamer’s freedom, she said.

“Shaker Aamer could come home today. He could get his life back. He could be restored to his home and family.”

She said to Mr Cameron: “We call on your government to respect Shaker Aamer’s wish to return to his family, all of whom are British citizens, honour his long-term right of return and indefinite leave to remain and act on your public statements that you are committed to Shaker Aamer’s release and return to the UK.”

Citing Truthout Report, UN Special Rapporteur “Looking Into” Guantanamo “Suicides”. Jeffrey Kaye, Truthout: “Earlier this month, Christof Heyns, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, responded to an inquiry by this reporter regarding new information on the deaths of two Guantanamo prisoners, Abdul Rahman Al Amri and Mohammad Salih Al Hanashi. According to the Department of Defense (DoD), both prisoners died of suicide in 2007 and 2009, respectively. But new details surrounding their deaths, first reported by Truthout March 1, challenged government accounts concerning what happened”: here.

Psychologists Paid by Guantanamo’s Masters Will Never Dismantle Their House of Torture. Roy Eidelson, Truthout: “Professional psychology has made valuable contributions to national security through collaborative efforts with government agencies – and it will undoubtedly continue to do so. But does anyone truly believe that crucial determinations about psychological ethics should ever be guided by the views and agenda of the secretary of defense or the director of the CIA?” Here.

The Kafkaesque censorship of lawyer-client discussions at Guantanamo Bay should send a stark warning to Britain over its plans to introduce secret evidence, legal action charity Reprieve said today: here.

Mark Karlin, Truthout: “Marjorie Cohn – a law professor and past president of the National Lawyer’s Guild – has assembled a compelling interdisciplinary anthology on the ‘normalization’ of torture as an extension of American foreign policy. This is not a new occurrence limited to the so-called ‘war on terror,’ but extends back decades”: here.

A ship carrying a cargo of weapons with explosives en route from the USA to Egypt must not be allowed to offload because of a substantial risk the weapons will be used by Egyptian security forces to commit human rights violations, Amnesty International said on Thursday: here.

Dubai‘s public prosecutor announced today that a man who was detained for incitement last week will face charges of threatening state security.

Essam al-Humaidan deemed that Saleh al-Dhafairi’s comments on recent uprisings elsewhere in the Middle East he had posted to his Twitter account “endangered the interests and security” of the United Arab Emirates.

Mr Dhafairi is also accused of “using religion to incite” rebellion.

The UAE, a federation of seven absolute monarchies led by oil-rich Abu Dhabi, has not been hit by mass protests – but authorities are increasingly wary of political activism.